90-Second Read: Calm Down. You Probably Won’t Get Ebola or Hantavirus at the World Cup.

Catherine Troisi, Chris Van Deusen, and Peter Hotez on Hantavirus, Ebola, and what Houston World Cup attendees should actually worry about. Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) learned of an outbreak of the rare Andes Hantavirus variant aboard the Dutch cruise liner MV Hondius. The truth is that both Hantavirus and Ebola work very differently from COVID-19, and many respected health officials state that humanity is not currently staring down the barrel of another global pandemic. Even a gutted public health sector still has protocols in place to monitor diseases like Hantavirus and Ebola; both have been extensively researched, so there's a generous corpus of information to pull from when monitoring and containing threats.

Between then and 2023, only around 30 cases per year in the United States were reported, all of them transmitted via contact with rodent feces rather than person to person. However, just because experts believe the Andes variant is well-contained, well-monitored, and won't reach COVID-19 levels of devastation, that doesn't mean the risk of contracting Hantavirus is zero. Like the Andes variant of Hantavirus, Ebola moves far more slowly than COVID-19, requiring prolonged contact with a sick individual or extensive interaction with infected body fluids. Troisi, who is also co-editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, says that epidemiologists have been aware of Hantavirus since 1993.

Unlike most Hantaviruses, which spread to humans via rodent droppings and are otherwise not communicable, the Andes variant, originating in the mountainous regions of Argentina and Chile, is contagious between humans. Considering Hantavirus's rarity, the internet quickly did what the internet does best: panic over what many assumed was the next COVID-19 pandemic. And then Ebola re-emerged in Mongbwalu, a gold-mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), before spreading and reaching outbreak status on May 15. As for Ebola, the other public health phantom hovering over Houston's World Cup festivities, neither Troisi nor Van Deusen thinks it's a catastrophic local concern.

As for the person-to-person Andes Hantavirus, she says another person with the variant flew on an airplane, and no one else was infected. While experts do not believe that Ebola and Hantavirus will be significant concerns, they warn against norovirus, colds, flu, West Nile virus, and other day-to-day diseases, including COVID. Hantavirus can be difficult to diagnose due to overlapping symptoms with other respiratory diseases, so it's critical to mention whether or not you believe you've come into contact with the virus through cleaning.